Reflections in Patience (revised!)
by Head Explody
Summary: Scully angsts for Mulder during "Patience"


Title: Reflections in Patience (revised!)  
  
Author: --Starbuck--  
  
Summary: Scully's reflections during "Patience"  
  
Rating: G  
  
Genre: Angst  
  
Spoilers: "Patience"  
  
Disclaimer: ...Well...I wish they were mine...but they're not...they all belong to the Creator and 1013...  
  
  
  
  
When Agent Doggett and I began this case, it was hard. I know that the two other agents he was with had their "ideas" about Mulder and I, but it didn't matter now. He came in looking embarassed, but it didn't matter now.   
  
I took Mulder's nameplate. The letters "FOX MULDER" stared up at me, and I was hypnotized by it. Mulder was gone. Skinner had watched him disappear in one of the alien ships he had searched for for so long. The image was engraved in my mind, and I saw it as he described it.  
  
I held the nameplate, feeling Mulder faintly. I almost put it in the drawer, but as Doggett came in with his coffee I slammed it back on the desk. This was Mulder's desk, we were just using it. And I voiced that to my temporary partner.  
  
Investigating the murder of a woman, I found a photo album. The woman had been leafing through her memories.  
  
Before I brought this evidence to attention, I looked through it myself. I wonder, when I grow older, will I have these fond memories to look upon?  
  
I will have my years with Mulder. And I hope that I have more. We will find him.  
  
Hopefully, I will have my child. It's such a shock to me, but it's one of the things I've dreamt of ever since *I* was a child. I have since discarded the false hopes of the large house, perfect lawn, white pickett fence, and a dog.  
  
Maybe I won't have the perfect home, I will have my apartment. Which will be notoriously remembered for the people who have died there. I feel no discomfort.  
  
I can smile sometimes at that, knowing that Mulder was a part of my rememberance.  
  
I may not have the same fond memories that woman had, or the ones I dreamed about as a young girl, but I have mine. And that is good enough for me.  
  
As the scene replayed itself in my mind, a gray-haired woman smiling at the memories she had collected over the years, I had a pained expression. Life could be sad.  
  
I imagined myself, in an attic, with a photo album of my life. My childhood at the military bases, hunting with my father, my pet rabbit I hid in the basement that I later found dead.   
  
My years studying medicine and physics, teaching at Quantico, my FBI training. Going against my parents' wishes and becoming an FBI agent. Melissa's words: "You never know who you'll meet at the FBI." She was right.  
  
And then the ones I will treasure forever. The day I walked into the basement office, sent to play watchdog. To invalidate Mulder's work. To shut him down.  
  
Yes, I began that career doing their bidding. I questioned Mulder's investigations left and right. A few years later, I was joining him. I had become part of his quest for the truth, part of the conspiracy. We haven't had too many Kodak moments. There's a picture of us from a few years ago we salvaged when the X-Files office burned down, but about it.  
  
It doesn't bother me, though. I have my memories, and that's all that matters.  
  
I brought the photo album in an evidence bag to Agent Doggett. I don't know what to make of him. I suppose I'll have to wait, like I will for Mulder.  
  
Later, we entered the small home on Bird Island, where a targeted victim of the "human bat" resided. He spoke of his troubled past forty-four years, which I found very moving. But I had nothing to say, and I hid my feelings.  
  
Two weeks later, back in the office that I could remember walking into and seeing Mulder's face smiling at me, I entered and once again held the nameplate in my hands. I ran my fingers over the letters, remembering when I had first seen them back in 1993. We've had eight years together, and nothing that I would change.  
  
All memories of my partner--not former partner, for we will find him--came flooding back to me all at once. Tears teased the backs of my eyes as I walked around to the drawer.  
  
I don't know exactly why I did it, maybe it just seemed "right" for now. I suppose it is.  
  
I returned home a few hours ago. I only think of Mulder, how everything is seeming to be revolving around him now. I hope to see him again, soon. For my source of strength and power is gone.  
  
But he will return. I just need patience.  
  
==XxXxX==  
  
There it is, revised...whatdoyouthink? 


End file.
